Prof Mark Williams and The Media Ecology Project have contracted with the creators of Photogrammar to build a prototype framework for a selection of work by acclaimed journalist photographer James Nachtwey, in collaboration with The Hood Museum and Dartmouth Library.

Dartmouth holds one of the most significant archives of photography in the world: the complete opus of photographer James Nachtwey. Since 1981, Nachtwey, a 1970 graduate of Dartmouth, has traveled the world as witness to some of the most significant events of the last forty years: the Irish ‘troubles’; pre- and post-Apartheid South Africa; Afghanistan; Rwanda; Bosnia; Iraq; famine and AIDS; and the American opioid epidemics among many others. In all there are more than a million images, captured in slides, gelatin silver work prints, film negatives and digital originals– a treasure trove of eye-witness accounts of what Nachtwey refers to as “the first draft” of history.  The Hood Museum has purchased the archive.

The Photogrammar model organizes the work visually in an interactive map, allowing searches by subject matter, location and other forms of digital metadata. Funding for this prototype has been generously provided by The Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth and a gift to the Hood Museum. Prof Williams, who directs MEP, has been working closely with James Nachtwey and Photogrammar developers Prof. Taylor Arnold and Prof. Lauren Tilton of The University of Richmond to refine design aspects of the prototype.